Tamara Flores
Did you know that a whopping 69 percent of gamers confess to smurfing, even though they despise it when others do the same? A recent study on gaming toxicity has shed light on this intriguing paradox.
If you’re not a gamer, you might be scratching your head, wondering what on earth smurfing is. Or perhaps you’re picturing gamers painting themselves blue and replacing all their verbs with “smurf” during their gaming sessions. If that’s your guess, you’re hilariously off the mark.
Here’s the real deal: when you play an online game against others, the game tries to pair you with players of a similar skill level. This is because game developers understand that it’s no fun being constantly trounced by far superior opponents. However, some crafty gamers find ways to bypass this system – they create new accounts or borrow them from others – to play against less skilled opponents.
The term “smurfing” originated in 1996 when two Warcraft 2 players became so good that others would quit matches upon seeing their usernames. To continue playing, they created secondary accounts named PapaSmurf and Smurfette, and continued their winning streak. The term “smurfing” has since been used to describe any player who deliberately creates new accounts to play against less skilled opponents.
Smurfing is a common occurrence, with 97 percent of study participants believing they’ve played against smurfs. Despite being viewed as toxic behavior by the gaming community, 69 percent confessed to smurfing at least occasionally, with 13 percent admitting to frequent or almost constant smurfing.
The study concluded with a feedback session where gamers (recruited from Reddit) shared various reasons for smurfing, from wanting to play with friends of different skill levels to simply wanting to dominate less experienced players. A follow-up study asked players to evaluate these reasons for smurfing, and to suggest appropriate punishments for smurfs.
The researchers anticipated that gamers would adopt a “motivated-blame perspective”, condemning smurfing regardless of the reasons. However, they found that gamers evaluated the acceptability of smurfing on a case-by-case basis, assigning more blame and suggesting harsher punishments for smurfs with less justifiable reasons (e.g., wanting to crush less-skilled players).
A third study revealed that non-gamers shared a similar perspective, recognizing nuances in smurfing behavior. While this is interesting in itself – given the toxicity often associated with gaming – the team hopes that these findings could have broader applications.
The study has been published in New Media & Society.
